Guardian Writer Dave Hill On Politics, People & Goings On

MayorJohnson/Planning

August 29, 2008

Boris Johnson’s campaign promise to protect London’s architectural heritage and its neighbourhoods’ characters was a significant part of his election pitch. By pledging to prevent new tall buildings from towering, uninvited, over cowering communities or spoiling the capital’s skyline he spoke to powerful conservative sentiments about tradition and also signalled a contrast with the readiness of Ken Livingstone to collaborate with trendy architects and charmless property developers. Under his leadership, Johnson claimed, structures with lofty ambitions would be permitted to sprout and congregate only in aesthetically and socially acceptable locations.

Already there are cries of betrayal. Some have come from east London, close to West Ham Football Club, where a local campaign group has upbraided Johnson for giving a barely-qualified green light to a 31 storey tower that would be part of the proposed redevelopment of the local Queen’s Market. I should admit to being biased: I own a set of green, see-through dinner plates of the type Tommy Steele would have eaten egg and chips off in his heyday which I bought from the market many years ago. But Johnson’s hands-off attitude to the proposed development does appear to be at odds with the principles he previously espoused.

A higher profile – and higher physically – example is, according to Johnson’s critics, his capitulation to a proposed 43-storey tower of luxury apartment in Doon Street on the South Bank, behind the National Theatre Approved under Livingstone, it was “called in” by communities secretary Hazel Blears for a public inquiry, but given the go-ahead by her earlier this month despite the objections of her own planning officers and English Heritage.

Johnson had very little chance of stopping this. The inquiry had taken place by the time he became mayor and although he could have reversed Livingstone’s decision before Blears’s findings were announced, it would have cut no ice with her and risked accusations of costly gesture politics. As a spokesperson for Johnson put it, “it is not possible for the new Mayor to re-open the matter without exposing London taxpayers to significant legal and financial risk.” Nonetheless, it’s a gesture some believe Johnson should have made. Writing in the Evening Standard, his erstwhile supporter Simon Jenkins described this as Johnson failing his “first test” as “an emphatic city mayor.”

The mayor’s office reiterated that Johnson, “has pledged to review London's planning policies including those relating to affordable housing and tall buildings” Furthermore – though only after a one heck of a fashion – he has the experienced former Westminster City Council leader Sir Simon Milton to assist him. But the Queens Market and Doon Street controversies both demonstrate in their different ways that matching pledges on urban planning with effective and consistent policies is no straightforward matter. They also show that a failure to do so where tall buildings are concerned can excite political passions as high as the buildings themselves.

August 12, 2008

What sorts of housing most benefits London's poorer neighbourhoods? My story of a test case of sorts begins:

"Boris Johnson has given the go-ahead to a £50m development project in a London borough led by a political ally, despite a warning from his own planning officers that it will fail to help meet the housing needs of some of the poorest local residents. The scheme, which will bring new housing and a health and social care centre to the White City area of west London, originally provided for 50% of its accommodation units to be 'affordable' - half for private purchase at 'intermediate' prices and half for 'social rent' by the least well-off."

August 04, 2008

"Plans to transform London’s urban realm through the mayor’s 100 Public Spaces programme have been abandoned and the 18-month-old organisation Design for London subsumed into a larger 'land and infrastructure' directorate.

Following BD’s revelation last month that new mayor Boris Johnson had dropped the flagship scheme to pedestrianise Parliament Square, a senior GLA source confirmed this week that the 100 Public Spaces programme will not be pursued further."

August 01, 2008

"Will anyone miss Design for London? Despite its name — which suggested the people who worked there actually got their hands dirty designing— the organisation’s remit was to persuade the boroughs to raise standards. Its eyes were firmly focused eastwards, where the 2012 London Olympics helped give it a role of sorts, but even on this it was never very convincing.

While it busied itself drawing up manifestos and holding exhibitions, it is difficult to see what real difference it has made in the 18 months since it was set up. Part of the problem was that it needed to bring its influence to bear on the London Development Agency, which controlled the money and the land, but this never happened."

Mayor Johnson's approach to planning was set out earlier this month and yesterday he announced, "measures to ensure that more affordable small shops are provided for in new retail developments." Here is the more appealing face of the Conservative romantic in the mayor. It's met with a mixed response. And what exactly is a "small" or "independent" retailer in the first place?

July 29, 2008

July 25, 2008

It's a market at Wards Corner, the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Tottenham High Road, threatened by developers. Mayor Johnson has asked that it be saved. "This much loved market is vitally important to the Latin American community," he says. That multiculturalist hat rather suits him. But is his Spanish as good as his Latin?

July 15, 2008

"Here, now, surely was the moment for 21st-century London to make some kind of assertion about our times and our tastes - to send a message to posterity about the kind of thing we really liked. And what did we get? We got red brick, slabby featureless yards of red brick, with no architectural punctuation except the featureless square windows. I mean no disrespect to Norway when I say it could have been a cut-price motel in Trondheim, or possibly the headquarters of a small gas company. It looked about as exciting as a Dutch VD clinic."

Trust Boris. Goes all the way to Holland to sight-see VD clinics then fails to find the exciting ones.

"My eyes travelled listlessly from the roof to the ground floor, where a new shop was being proclaimed. It was - omigod - it was T-t-tesco. It was Tesco that had yet again cuckooed its way into the neighbourhood. Tesco the destroyer of the old-fashioned high street, Tesco the slayer of small shops, Tesco through whose air-conditioned portals we are all sucked like chaff, as though hypnotised by some Moonie spell."

Ah, that old Tory dilemma: pro market forces, anti their monopolistic effects. The mayor characterises his capitulation to the latter as hypocrisy, albeit mitigated by realism:

"We extol the small shops; we pretend to yearn for the days when you queued on sawdust for someone to climb a ladder and reach for a dusty tin at the back of a darkened shelf. But in reality we love the light and the space and the ease and the affordability of the supermarkets; and that, I realised, was why Tesco had managed to instal itself in yet another location; not because the people at Tesco were megalomaniacal bullies, but because they were responding to public demand."

July 10, 2008

"Speaking at the launch of his ‘Planning for London’ manifesto, which sets out his new planning policies, Boris Johnson said the provision of more affordable homes was a top priority. He denied that his decision to scrap the previous mayor’s 50% affordable housing target on large developments would hamper delivery. ‘Local boroughs do not respond well to centrally-imposed targets. We will build in co-operation with the boroughs,’ Johnson said."